cheese it, the cops!

Thugs and changing times without change in people

I've been quiet even though there have been a lot of things I've wanted to chime in on. However, the murder of Trayvon Martin has provoked a response. When exactly did behavior by self-appointed guardians of the people as lousy as the B-Specials in Ulster in 1968, the Klan in 1954, or the Security Forces in South Africa become legal in Florida? Self-defense is a universal defense if there actually is a threat...a black teen armed with skittles doesn't cut it as a defense for murder or Manslaughter 1. Florida is now less civilized than South Africa -- hell, the stats would probably bear us out on this. Sad -- we're less a civil society than we were in 1980...but then, why does that surprise me?

Slante' friends, we need it. 

now i want to be your dog

the redoubtable douthat smacks jfk, the most overrated single individual in species history, with the possible exceptions of pablo picasso and james joyce. what people remember so intensely is the 'charisma.' whatever in the world that might be (perhaps a kind of supernatural sweat). i guess we just want someone sexy to tell us what to do: political leadership as s&m.

bachmann's history

suddenly michele bachmann's bio seems important, and michelle goldberg gives a solid interesting run-through. there's this:

At Coburn, Bachmann studied with John Eidsmoe, who she recently described as "one of the professors who had a great influence on me." Bachmann served as his research assistant on the 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution, which argued that the United States was founded as a Christian theocracy, and that it should become one again. "The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God," Eidsmoe wrote. "In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy."

Eidsmoe, who hung up the phone when asked for an interview, is a contentious figure. Last year, he withdrew from speaking at a Wisconsin Tea Party rally after the Associated Press raised questions about his history of addresses to white-supremacist groups. In 2010, speaking at a rally celebrating Alabama's secession from the Union, he claimed that Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than Abraham Lincoln.

Reading Eidsmoe, though, some of Bachmann's most widely ridiculed statements begin to make sense. Earlier this year, for example, she was mocked for saying that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery. But in books by Eidsmoe and others who approach history from what they call a Christian worldview, this is a truism. Despite his defense of the Confederacy, Eidsmoe also argues that even those founders who owned slaves opposed the institution and wanted it to disappear, and that it was only Christian for them to protect their slaves until it did. "It might be very difficult for a freed slave to make a living in that economy; under such circumstances setting slaves free was both inhumane and irresponsible," he wrote.

the idea that the united states was founded as a theocracy is just wacky. largely, it was founded by deists, enlightenment-age religious skeptics. some of the rest of this is not wacky at all. jefferson and madison and washington were all slave-owners who expressed their opposition to the institution of slavery and hoped that it would end. you could call that hypocrisy of course, but the claim itself is accurate, and they also reached for the justification that they didn't want merely to free their slaves because they needed to be protected, etc. 

it sounds to some people strange to say that calhoun, for example, understood the constitution better than lincoln. but calhoun was easily the more well-versed of the two in the history of the constitution, the fed papers, etc., and also easily the more scholarly and intellectual. his late treatises a disquisition on government and a discourse on the constitution and government of the united states (check here) are among the most important works of republican political theory, or of political theory in the united states, written in the nineteenth century, despite the highly disturbing pro-slavery undertow.

it might seem obvious that nullification and secession are unconstitutional, but that is not obvious at all. jefferson argued that either was justified - and in keeping with the constitution - in the face of the alien and sedition acts, for example (check here). lysander spooner - an ardent abolitionist and legal scholar - agreed, even in the lead-up to the civil war (here), etc.

just for the heck of it, i might add that the most extreme and principled abolitionists were evangelical protestant christians. and i should think that even the biggest fans of abraham lincoln would or should admit that in order for him to justify and prosecute the civil war, the constitution had to be stretched virtually to breaking.

the mid-day ride of sarah palin

washpost keeps its batteries blazing on palin's bus, this time attacking her account of paul revere's ride. ok there was a little glitch that has revere warning the british, which was left instead to minutemen warned in turn by revere etc. but she got this much right: the brits were out there to disarm americans, often a difficult task. in this case the americans showed up armed in what was later emerson and hawthorne's back yard. let's put it this way: they weren't fighting to preserve medicare as they knew it.

henry adams is really an astonishing historian. he's way into the mechanics of legislation, the details of economy and demography: the dedication to the real detail is exemplary. and yet the characterizations are incredibly compelling and vivid. jefferson is beautifully delineated: fairly and definitively, with all the problems and all the compelling qualities. but also aaron burr or hamilton or napoleon or charles iv of spain and many fascinating figures now entirely forgotten.

the histories never take on a merely narrative or sing-song story quality in the contemporary fashion, but they nevertheless deploy characters in a compelling way, and track them through events in a manner that connects them and makes them comprehensible. and then there is the writing: full of sharp and felicitous and unique formulations, both clear and highly nuanced. and often very funny: gentle or ironical or even sarcastic; by turns cynical and deployed in the service of a kind of idealism.

one funny thing: he doesn't seem to want to write the name 'john adams'; it's always 'the previous president' and the like.

i'm teaching a course on 'american political thought' and i've been reading pretty hard in the founders. i've drawn the conclusion (not that many haven't drawn it before me) that john adams was, by a ways, the best, the most formidable, the most knowledgeable, the most scholarly, the sharpest-edged intellect among the founders. one extremely neglected just virtuoso moment is a defence of the constitutions of government of the united states of america (it's a defense of the state constitutions (including his own constitution for massachusetts), written before the national constitution was ratified). it's a three-volume response to a three-page letter from the french thinker/statesman turgot that constitutes an exhaustive history of republican ideas. he's got all the roman historians, machiavelli, harrington, locke, montesquieu, and many others all in their original languages. he's got the swiss cantons, the italian city-states, the dutch republics, an exhaustive sense of english political history, and then there are the incas, zoroaster, india etc etc: an absolutely exhaustive history of republican ideas.

no other founder could have done this; none could even have assayed it. jefferson was a formidable intellect, but by comparison a dilettante. franklin was delightful and sharp as a tack, but not a scholar on this level. it's an intimidating book - though adams can be quite a delightful writer - but still it deserves a lot better than it has gotten; it's out of print, and has rarely even been issued as a book; people who read it usually read it as part of the complete works. well i daresay it needs a revival and a new scholarly edition. but that itself is a vast and intimidating project.

and adams' thought is the most influential on the shape of the american constitution, though all these guys were separation of powers type republicans of one sort of another. and i love his marriage best of all: he loved the fact that abby kicked ass.

update: well i guess it's not out of print if you're ready to drop $250. geez.